As KSL reported, the sign taped to the window this summer joked that Silverside Deli was "about to pull the shortest move ever." It wasn't exaggerating. The sandwich shop that chef Zach Wojdula has run out of a cramped storefront on McClelland Street since 2023 was picking up and relocating less than a block away, to a space at 2122 S. Highland Drive with roughly 50 percent more room. A short walk. A bigger dining room. A move that small still had to clear a state liquor rule.
Keeping its liquor license meant a city council waiver, a 30-day public comment period, and a city planning review of the distance between the deli's front door and Sprague Library. If you eat on this stretch of Highland Drive, that detail says more about how the block is built than any listing description ever will.
What Actually Moved
Silverside built its following on a small menu executed with more care than a lunch counter usually gets: the chopped cheese, the Korean fried chicken sandwich, a rotating slate of monthly specials that Wojdula and the ownership reportedly test six or seven times before they make the board. The problem was never the food. It was the room. The original McClelland Street location filled up at peak hours with nowhere to put the overflow, which is the kind of problem that eventually forces a decision.
The decision was to move east to Highland Drive, into a space large enough to add seating and expand the kitchen, while staying inside the same neighborhood that built the following in the first place. The new address sits close enough to the old one that most regulars could probably walk both storefronts in under two minutes. That proximity is exactly what turned a routine relocation into a paperwork problem.
Ninety Feet on a Map, Almost Four Hundred on the Sidewalk
Silverside already held a liquor license at its old address. Utah law generally blocks a restaurant from holding or transferring a liquor license if it sits too close to a "community location," a category that includes schools, churches, parks, playgrounds and libraries. The new Highland Drive space sits directly across the street from Sprague Library, which put the deli inside that restricted zone.
A new state law, HB597, changed the math slightly this year by letting restaurants within 200 feet of one of those locations apply to their city for a waiver instead of being blocked outright. Measured in a straight line, Silverside's new front door sits about 90 feet from the library, well inside the zone that triggers the rule. But Salt Lake City's planning director, Nick Norris, argued that a straight line isn't how anyone actually gets from one building to the other. His team mapped the nearest crosswalk and found the real walking distance is closer to 400 feet, four times the straight-line figure. As Norris put it to KSL, the wide streets and long blocks that define this part of Sugar House mean a spot that looks close on paper often isn't close on foot.
The wrinkle got sharper once the city looked at who else was already pouring drinks on the same corner. Sugar House Station, Sugar House Pub and the neighborhood's Buffalo Wild Wings all hold active liquor licenses despite sitting within a similar radius of the library, because their licenses predate the current proximity rules and were grandfathered in. Silverside's new building never had a liquor license before, so it got no such head start. Council members were briefed on the waiver request in late July, held a public hearing on August 18, and were expected to vote by September 22 after the state-mandated comment period ran its course.
The deli didn't wait around for the paperwork. Photos from the new Highland Drive space show Wojdula back behind the counter by mid-September, meaning Silverside reopened and started serving sandwiches before the liquor question was fully settled. If the waiver had stalled, the shop's owners had already told reporters that losing beer and wine sales for a while wouldn't be what closed them down. It's a lunch counter, not a bar. But they'd still rather keep the full menu intact, and a second Silverside location is already in the works downtown on Main Street, in a storefront that briefly housed Italian Olive.
Two Blocks Away, a Brand-New Building Skipped All of This
While Silverside was working through zoning history, a much larger company was opening two blocks away without any of the same friction. Sweetgreen, the salad chain that has never had a Utah location, opened its first Utah restaurant on September 8 at 2188 Highland Drive, inside a 3,160-square-foot space built from scratch rather than converted from an older building. The company is entirely corporate-owned, with no franchise structure, and Sugar House was its choice for a Utah debut over any other market in the state.
The contrast is not about which business is better for the block. It's about what kind of building triggers which kind of rule. Sweetgreen doesn't serve alcohol, so the library-proximity question that shaped Silverside's summer never applied. A new-construction space built to a modern footprint sidesteps a set of restrictions that an older storefront, sitting on a lot platted decades before anyone wrote a liquor-proximity law, runs straight into. Two businesses opened on the same short stretch of the same street in the same month, and only one of them needed the city council's attention to do it.
The Street Underneath Both of Them Is Also Torn Up
None of this happened on a quiet block. The Utah Transit Authority has been extending the S-Line streetcar a quarter mile east, from its current terminus near Fairmont Park to a new station planned right at Highland Drive and Simpson Avenue, close enough to both storefronts that construction crews and lunch customers have been sharing the same sidewalks. The project carries a price tag of roughly $43.5 million, funded through a mix of state transit dollars, city and UTA contributions, and donated city property, according to reporting from Building Salt Lake.
Work started over the summer with the demolition of a former Deseret Industries building near 2140 South and 800 East, followed by track construction. The Simpson Avenue diagonal connection, a short cut-through many drivers and cyclists use to reach Highland Drive, closed for roughly six weeks between August 4 and September 15 to accommodate the work, according to UTA's own project updates. The parking lot across from the Cinemark theater, which will eventually become the new station site, has also been closed off during this phase. UTA's public timeline puts revenue service sometime in 2027, though earlier reporting on the project cited estimates ranging as late as early 2028 depending on how testing goes.
What This Adds Up To on the Ground
Silverside relocated from McClelland Street to Highland Drive, and Sweetgreen opened its first Utah restaurant there. UTA’s streetcar extension, planned long before either restaurant existed, brought construction to the same six blocks. Their effects converged on Highland Drive within the same six weeks, which means anyone who eats lunch or catches the bus on this stretch is dealing with construction detours, a familiar deli in an unfamiliar building, and a brand-new national chain, all at once, without any single announcement that explained the whole picture.
The Silverside waiver is the clearest proof of how tightly built this particular corner of Sugar House already is. A business can move less than a block and still cross a legal line that exists because the library, the pub, the deli and the streetcar stop are all close enough together that a city planner has to argue, in writing, about the difference between a straight line and a sidewalk.
If you're trying to make sense of how a stretch like Highland Drive actually functions day to day, and what that means for a property nearby, Nikole Andersen Real Estate can walk you through it. Contact Nikole for a complimentary market consultation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
